Narratives and Business Creation

Abstract

Do articles on the "American Dream" in local U.S. newspapers spur local entrepreneurship? To answer this question, we assess almost 40,000 such articles from the most recent decade using generative artificial intelligence. We find that one additional American Dream article published in a U.S. county is associated with a one percent increase in local entrepreneurship, an effect lasting for two subsequent years and which is four times larger when the narrative is "rags-to-riches". We deploy the narration of "educational-attainment-as-the-pathway-to-riches" to reach a causal interpretation. Our findings imply that regular media narratives can have a sizable impact on important economic outcomes.